Browsing by Department "Asian and Middle Eastern Studies"

The Ainu, an indigenous people of Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, have often
been referred to both in Japan and in the West as being a “dying race”. This thesis
seeks to deconstruct that myth and contextualize it within ...

Focusing specifically in urban cosmopolitan Cairo during the aftermath of the alleged
January 25th Revolution, this ethnographic project is an invitation to a deeper exploration
of sex and sexuality in the Middle East. During ...

In this thesis, I tackle the notion of identity within the very specific sociocultural
space of Japan. I critique the conception of Japanese identity as it has emerged in
concert with the West through the 19th and 20th centuries. ...

The phenomenal success of Western fast food brands in China has fascinated researchers
and business people alike since its dawn in the late 1980’s. The two largest Western
fast food brands in China, McDonald’s and Kentucky ...

This thesis seeks to answer the question, “Which attributes in China’s market conditions
during the past 40 years have led to the creation of the largest automotive industry
in the world?” The first chapter provides a historical ...

Coptic-Muslim relations are often portrayed in black-and-white binaries. The Copts
are the oppressed minority, whereas the Muslims are the aggressive majority; the Copts
are practitioners of a subservient faith, while the ...

This thesis seeks a complex understanding of the Islamic State through a multi-layered
analysis of its territorial construction and physical form, its ideology, and its
virtuality. By analyzing the way each of these aspects ...

The 1951 Refugee Convention recognizes two groups of refugees: one outside the country
of his/her nationality and another group without nationality outside of the place
of their habitual residence. However, because stateless ...

Securitization theory, while designed to describe the politics surrounding extra-military
threats to a nation, has rarely been used as a frame to analyze countries that exist
in a state of deep and permanent securitization. ...

This thesis considers Comrade Literature (同志文学tongzhi wenxue), a genre of contemporary
Chinese homosexual (tongzhi) fiction, as it has emerged on the internet in Mainland
China. Although Comrade Literature first emerged ...

Maithilisharan Gupt’s Saket, written in 1932, is an epic Hindi poem presenting the
story of the Ramayana from a humanized and highly emotional perspective. As the work
of a National Poet written during a time in which nationalist ...